Rita Royale. Terry Jr. Anderson

      

      Rita Royale

      by

      Terry Anderson

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales, is entirely coincidental.

      Copyright 2012, by Terry Anderson. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Published in eBook format by http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0787-6

      Author’s note:

      The character, Rita Royale, is loosely based on the mannerisms and physical appearance of an American woman I knew while living in Victoria and while still in my twenties. A friend. A few years older than myself. A beautiful green-eyed California blonde who always turned heads whenever she entered a room. A woman who, to this day, I still think of as a true Libertine, though not in the dissolute way the word is often framed. Perhaps free spirit is a better choice of words. Maybe a combination of both. A woman who had a real effect on my life.

      I hadn’t thought about this woman in years, people drift, lose touch. As I was reading some of my favorite blogs early one morning, the pages full of articles about Sharia law, honor killings, the killing of gays and lesbians under Islamic law, the stoning’s, beheadings, and on and on it went, I could suddenly hear my old friend’s voice telling me exactly what she would think of Sharia. An image of her came to me, standing firm, hands on her hips, head tilted slightly, shooting me her serious look.

      More than a few times during the writing of ‘Rita Royale’ I wondered what I had fallen into. Suddenly I was back face to face with a woman I once loved. Still, the words and ideas kept coming from somewhere, don’t ask me where, elves maybe, and I kept typing. I do hope I’ve succeeded in creating an interesting and thought provoking story centered around a freedom-loving woman named, Rita Royale.

      A Few Years Earlier…

      He noticed the wind blow a few strands of long blonde hair into her mouth, watched her silently brush them away. Joe Redbone said. “I had a vision a while back.”

      “A vision?”

      “It was confusing at first, but I see it clearly now.”

      Rita looked at him, at the foothills, the mountains beyond, down and over the small town of Longview, Alberta. The pair sat on a high hill with a good view of the area. An eagle cried far above them. She looked up, watched it circle.

      Joe squinted in the light, looked at her face. “What does the eagle make you feel?”

      “Something nice. Peace maybe.”

      “You were in my vision. The bird too. Your hair was very short, not like now. But it was you. The eagle told me it is your spirit guide. It even told me your name.”

      Rita studied his tanned leathery face. The sharp deep creases and lines. The face of a friend. “My name?”

      “It called you, Green Eyed Eagle.”

      She smiled. “Sounds like you made that up.”

      “It also told me that when times are dark to look for the eagle. Look to it for guidance. Dark times are coming, Green Eyed Eagle, but look to the bird in those times.”

      Rita retrieved a small bag of beef jerky from her jacket pocket, handed the bag to Joe Redbone. “So its good to have the eagle for a spirit guide?”

      He smiled, reached his fingers inside the bag, removed a small strip of dried beef, looked into her green eyes. “Yes. A good thing.”

      Joe Redbone chewed slowly, savoring the beef and the view all around them, listened to the west wind whisper as it blew across the foothills and bent the blades of the short sun scorched grass that blanketed the high hill, the eagle watching from far above, circling under a clear blue sky.

      Chapter One

      Barefoot, Rita Royale was just a shade over five feet six inches in height, her eyes green like South American grapes, her hair blonde cropped short crew cut fashion, a face and body definitely worthy of a centerfold spread, but at thirty-one that was unlikely to happen. In truth, Rita had never given modeling a thought in her entire life though she had been approached on more than one occasion asking if she would like to be photographed in the nude. One offer was for pretty good money too, but she turned them all down flat. Her world was poker. And she was good at it.

      She dried her hair with a beige towel, looked at her naked body in the full length bathroom mirror, at the scar still visible below her left shoulder. A bullet scar. A bullet that entered the front and exited out the back cleanly. No bone fragments just a clean straight through shot. She laughed to herself a little, it could have been much worse had Doc Sam not been sitting in the game that night, a doctor of veterinary skills who drove her to his nearby office and patched her up. Gave her an injection of something nice too.

      Those were the days, she thought, the early days in the back room of Quon Lee’s Diner out on the old highway, before the overpass got built and changed everything. The days of Bill the Bulgarian, Danny the Deuce, and his penchant for rarely folding a pair of twos. It was Danny who shot her. He didn’t mean to, but he was drunk and his deuces didn’t hold up against another guy with a better hand. He meant to shoot at the picture of some long dead Chinese Emperor hanging on the wall behind her head, but the gun discharged a little early. Danny never played after that and never stopped apologizing to Rita whenever their paths crossed. He even gave her the .22 pistol he shot her with.

      She didn’t play in live games much these days except maybe the odd tournament or house game. These days her action was online hold-em. Definitely not the same feel like at Quon Lee’s, but computer poker has a feel all its own. Rita did pretty good playing this style of poker, aside from the inevitable bad beats along the way, though she missed the bantering and her old friends taking peeks at her breasts when she stood bent over raking in a pot. Rita liked wearing a low cut top when she played, she thought it gave her an edge with the men. The shapely 34 D’s rarely failed to divert attention.

      Nowadays she played in sweats mostly. Tucked away in the spare bedroom of her rented trailer, her comfy chair, cup of coffee and her lucky two dollar Canadian coin with the gold colored center piece featuring the bust of the Queen and a polar bear, both of which were mysteriously missing. It was more a loop than a coin now. The man who gave it to her said it would bring her luck. It was one of the first two dollar coins they made, he said, and some of the centers popped out until the mint fixed the problem. Rita won the next three out of four pots. The coin had been with her ever since that night. Same as the pistol.

      She heard the phone ringing, walked naked into the bedroom and picked up the cell phone from the night stand parked crookedly close beside the unmade bed. She looked at the number, pushed a button and put the phone to her ear. “Hello Karen.”

      “Rita. Am I ever glad I caught you home. Have you had any trouble yet?”

      Rita squinted. “What trouble?”

      “Don’t you watch the news?”

      “I don’t have a television. Or a radio either.”

      “The government just passed Sharia law in Canada. We’re all under Sharia law now. This is very bad.”

      “Are you telling me that Muslims are running Canada now?”

      “You do know Canada has had a minority government for almost a year now?” Karen shook her head, sometimes her sister could be so dense. “Anyway, the socialists and the so called Liberals, others too I think, voted down the Conservative government a few months ago, formed a coalition government and now they just passed Sharia as the law of Canada.”

      “Can they do that?”

      “People